This invention relates to the field of semiconductor fabrication, and more particularly to semiconductor device separation.
Sapphire wafers are an important semiconductor substrate. They are especially important for the development of gallium nitride based materials technology, which is used in blue spectrum light emitting diodes (LEDs). The production of high brightness LEDs in the blue spectrum is a relatively recent optoelectronics technology. The demand for nitride based LEDs, such as bright blue, bright green and other color LEDs, currently exceeds the industry""s capability to supply them. Sapphire based device separation, however, remains a significant obstacle to efficient fabrication. Current separation techniques waste valuable wafer surface area, involve costly consumables, and have long process times.
Semiconductor fabrication processes involve fabricating several thousand individual devices, or dies, on one wafer. After processing and testing, the wafer may be thinned and the dies must be separated from the wafer. Separation has been traditionally accomplished using either a dicing saw or a scribe-and-break process, both of which rely on diamond chips to cut the material. These two processes have been very effective on silicon and III-V substrates, because the material is much softer than diamond. However, sapphire""s crystal structure, crystal orientation, inherent hardness, and material strength inhibit these methods from working well.
Specifically, the diamond""s edge dulls quickly when applied to sapphire. To compensate, dicing saw blades designed to cut sapphire contain diamonds in a resin matrix. The dicing blades wear quickly to constantly expose new, sharp diamonds. Although processing times and the number of blades is dependent on die size, studies have shown that completely dicing a 17 mil thick sapphire substrate into 16 milxc3x9716 mil die would require up to four blades and over 2 hours of process time and the maximum yield would be 25%. A 4 mil thick sapphire substrate completely shatters during dicing. These low yields make it difficult to meet commercial demand. The yields are low because the minimum blade thickness is 8 mil. This results in a kerf width of  greater than 0.010xe2x80x3. Thinner blades, however, produce poor quality cuts. A significant amount of available device surface area is therefore wasted during wafer sawing.
The scribe-and-break separation process also relies on a sharp diamond edge or facet. The scribe tip has a diamond head which is quickly dulled by the sapphire. This requires frequent and costly tip replacement. Due to these factors, a sapphire dicing process will produce too low a yield. Moreover, both the sawing and diamond scribing process become very complex due to diamond wear.
Another method for device separation is discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,151,389 and 5,214,261, both of which are issued to Zapella. These references discuss a method for dicing semiconductor substrates using an excimer laser beam. This method uses a laser beam that is oriented out of normal with respect to the substrate to ensure non-tapered cuts. A drawback of this method is that the substrate and the laser beams must be maintained within the critical out of normal ranges. A further drawback is that a polyimide coating is used to prevent xe2x80x9cdustxe2x80x9d from settling onto the surface. The removal of this coating via chemical peeling introduces the possibility of contamination.
The present invention is a method for efficient and inexpensive separation of semiconductor wafers by laser ablation. The method uses a laser to ablate material from the substrate, resulting in a separated wafer. Laser separation is advantageous because it permits processing of any sapphire based product, such as blue LEDs, inexpensively and quickly. Importantly, the separation methods are applicable to gallium arsenide (GaAs) and to other semiconductors with the same potential benefits of high throughputs, narrow kerfs and no cutting tips to wear.
In an exemplary embodiment, the method of the present invention separates semiconductor wafers into a plurality of devices via laser ablation. A laser light emission is generated and sent through optical elements and masks to obtain a patterned laser projection. The patterned laser projection is then directed toward a given surface of a semiconductor wafer such that the patterned laser projection is substantially perpendicular to the given surface. The patterned laser projection is applied for a specified time at a specified power to obtain at least a partial cut through the semiconductor wafer. If the wafers are not fully cut using the laser, a mechanical method is then applied to complete the separation and create the dies.
Advantageously, the pattern of the laser projection can be selected in view of the type of semiconductor wafer. For example, the patterned laser projection of the present invention can be one long, narrow line that cuts several millimeters with one pulse or several smaller lines that cut several rows simultaneously with one pulse. Moreover, a protective layer is applied to the cutting surface to prevent cutting process effluent from contaminating the devices.
The method of the present invention results in a kerf in the order of 10 xcexcm wide if cut from a front surface and less than 10 xcexcm if cut from a back or substrate surface. Consequently, the present invention reduces wastage of wafer space and permits more devices to be placed on the wafer. The above factors make the present invention an efficient, low maintenance and high production method for separating semiconductor wafers. Such a method is a significant step toward meeting the demand for sapphire based devices.